Around the Fairest Sun
by Azaz the Unabridged
Summary: Post36 AU. ShinnStellar, fluff, drabble, twoshot. What? It's two oneshots.
1. Chapter 1

_GSD AU after episode 33. Shinn/Stellar, some Kira/Lacus, Athrun, Cagalli. _

**Around the Fairest Sun**

Freedom returns to the Archangel before the Minerva makes it to Berlin, cradling Destroy's cockpit in its arms. This person is too dangerous to return to the battlefield, no matter what mobile suit they're given, but Kira refuses to kill.

"Bah," says Murdoch. "Too nice for your own good, kid. Should have cut it down and been done with it, after everything."

"She's just a girl," snaps Cagalli, coming to Kira's defense as the Archangel's medical squad hoists the unconscious girl onto a stretcher. She fiddles with the ring on her finger. "There's still time to help her."

* * *

"That was Stellar, boy!" shouts Roanoke over the universal broadcast channels, as Impulse circles the fallen Destroy unit. 

Shinn's eyes go red and blank as he stares at the spot where the Freedom disappeared.

* * *

"She's not just wounded from the shrapnel, is she?" asks Kira, watching the girl toss and turn in the infirmary. 

"According to this scan," said the doctor, wringing his hands nervously, "she has some chemicals in her body that seem to be… artificial. All I know about this sort of thing are the experiments the Seirans did on an all-Natural elite pilot corps—"

"They _what_—"

Kira catches Cagalli's flailing arm. "Tell us more, doctor."

* * *

The girl stirs. "Shinn…" 

"Shinn…" She tosses and turns frantically in the infirmary. "Shinn… I'm scared…"

Athrun, waking up from his long, long sleep, turns and stares at the girl on the bed next to him.

She's been alive this whole time.

"Shinn… Shinn said he'd protect…" She coughs weakly, faintly.

Athrun tries to block it out. _Shinn…_

* * *

"Is that better?" asks Lacus warmly. 

"Stellar is still scared," she says, slipping behind Kira to avoid the doctors attempting to monitor her progress.

"That's alright," says Lacus. "We can all be a little scared."

"If Shinn were here…"

"Hmm?"

"Then Stellar wouldn't be afraid."

"We'll find him again for you," says Kira, finally waving the doctors away. "That's a promise."

* * *

Cagalli attempts to lend Stellar her dresses, but the other girl is too busty. 

Cagalli scowls, just a little bit.

* * *

They take her to watch the sea whenever the Archangel surfaces – Kira or Cagalli or Lacus or all three of them at once, sitting and talking with her or saying nothing at all. When the ship submerges again, they walk her through the ship's hallways, introducing her to this mechanic or this Murasame pilot. 

Slowly, she stops becoming afraid of these people.

* * *

"Do you want to see him again?" asks Athrun. 

"'Him'?" she echoes.

"Shinn."

"Of course Stellar wants to see Shinn!"

He reaches into the locker, tugs out Lacus's flightsuit. "Will you be afraid?" he asks, gesturing towards Justice.

"Never," she proclaims. "Not if Stellar is going to Shinn."

* * *

A small pink bundle drifts out of Justice's cockpit, arms outstretched, beaming visibly even through her helmet as she reaches out across a battle that has suddenly frozen for good. "Shinn!"

* * *

"Stellar has something to say," she informs him. "Stellar has wanted to say it for a long time but Stellar hasn't found Shinn…" 

"What is it?" he asks, smiling.

"Stellar loves Shinn."

This, of all moments, is when Shinn begins to cry.

"—is Shinn sad? Stellar thought that—"

"I'm happy," he says, and holds her close forever. "With you... I'm happy."


	2. Chapter 2

**Around the Fairest Sun**

_**part ii**_

"Like this," he says, arms spread wide to demonstrate the simplest swimming stroke he knows. "You push the water out and you bring your arms back! Now you try."

"Shinn! Shinn, Stellar is scared—" She panics the moment he takes her further into the pool, the moment her feet leave the ground.

"I'm still holding on to you," he smiles, treading water to keep them both afloat, following the faint tug of the tide. "It's fine.

* * *

There is work to be done after the war is over – too much, Shinn will tell anyone who hasn't heard him grump about it before, though none of it anything that he's particularly good at. ZAFT is willing to give him any job in its organizational structure he wants, so long as he keeps the FAITH crescent well-polished, but the whole point to a cease-fire is that there's no more need for mobile suit pilots, and there's no real need for Shinn. He begins as an overpaid bodyguard for one of the Council's representatives. It's good work. No one even minds if Stellar tags along after Shinn – as one man points out, an Extended is at least as effective as a redcoat when it comes to a fight. But that's exactly why Shinn wants to move on.

* * *

"For Stellar?" 

"That's right. An ocean just for you."

* * *

He asks (demands, really, but he outranks all the personnel officers, so he's allowed to boss them about, even in peacetime) for an Earthside transfer and gets one. It's harder to harass the military into buying him a small beachside house, but he points out that he's never used any of his dozens of bonuses and awards (or, for that matter, any of his salary) and that there's plenty of money in his military accounts and, dammit, he's a _war hero_ and _someone_ around had to understand real estate. Amazingly enough, no one actually knows the first thing about buying a home in Aprilius's personnel headquarters, but Coordinators learn quickly. Especially when testy ex-mobile suit pilots lounge in the office with guns.

* * *

"No, turn that burner _off_—" 

"This one?"

He flips off the stove as the eggs catch flame and the fire alarm goes off and the sprinkler system drenches the two of them and everything else in the kitchen. "No. Not that one."

"Oh," she notes absentmindedly, shaking the sudden shower off like a wet puppy. "Does Shinn know what Stellar was supposed to do, then?"

Shinn looks at the eggs and the stove and realizes that, no, he doesn't know what was supposed to happen, either.

There's a reason they eat out most nights.

* * *

On the days that Stellar doesn't follow Shinn into what ZAFT calls a job and Shinn calls sitting around being bored, she watches the ocean, watching ships at sea and small children down the beach and the waves slowly wearing away the shoreline. And she realizes, before the tide pulls the thought back out again, that maybe she is being worn away at, too. She isn't afraid. 

"I have to go," he said, voice pained, eyes averted, lips pursed tight with worry.

"Stellar will come!" she says enthusiastically, throwing her arms around Shinn.

He seems, although Stellar cannot fathom why, nervous. "You shouldn't…"

"Stellar thinks she should go wherever Shinn goes."

And that is that.

* * *

They arrive at Armory-One this time dressed in civilian clothes – he in the "meeting important people" clothing that he hates so much and she long since stripped of any knives or gun. And they're back where it began, but too much has changed for them to say they've returned to the same place. Stellar is content to watch the people as they wait for Shinn's meeting, the ebb and flow of crowds, and Shinn is content to watch her, both of them relaxing into the tide. 


End file.
